The 11-Year-Old Oil Millionaire – Sarah Rector’s Story

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The facts, then. Sarah Rector was born in a two-room cabin near Twine, Oklahoma, on March 3, 1902. Her parents, Joseph and Rose Rector, were Black descendants of the Muscogee Creek Nation, formerly enslaved by Creek tribe members. Under the Dawes Allotment Act, each member of the Rector family received 160 acres of land. Sarah’s land was valued at $556.50. It was rocky, barren, and considered worthless.

Her father struggled to pay the $30 annual property tax. In February 1911, he leased her land to the Devonian Oil Company to cover the cost. Two years later, independent oil driller B.B. Jones struck a gusher. The well produced 2,500 barrels of oil per day. At 11 years old, Sarah Rector began earning $300 a day. That is more than $10,000 today.

Newspapers called her “the richest negro in the world.” A 1914 Washington Post article described her as “an orphan, crude, Black, and uneducated, yet worth more than $4,000,000.” A 1914 headline read: “Oil Made Pickaninny Rich – Oklahoma Girl With $15,000 A Month gets Many Proposals – Four White Men in Germany Want to Marry the Negro Child That They Might Share Her Fortune.”

Under the law at the time, wealthy Black citizens of Indian Territory had to be assigned white guardians. Rector’s parents chose T.J. Porter, a man they knew personally. When word of her fortune spread, NAACP leaders W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington grew concerned. A newspaper claimed she was being exploited, living in rags. None of it was true. She attended school in Taft, lived in a modern five-room cottage, and owned an automobile.

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By age 18, Rector was worth an estimated $1 million—about $11 million today. She owned stocks and bonds, a boarding house, a bakery and restaurant, and 2,000 acres of land. She moved her family to Kansas City and lived a life of luxury, entertaining Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Joe Louis.

Rector married Kenneth Campbell in 1922. He was the second African American to own an auto dealership. They had three sons. They divorced in 1930. She remarried in 1934. Sarah Rector died on July 22, 1967, at age 65. Her wealth had diminished, but she still had working oil wells and real estate. She was buried in Taft Cemetery, Oklahoma.

Her nieces say they never knew she was a millionaire. “She was just like the rest of our aunts,” one told News On 6. They remember her as joyful, kind, and surrounded by family. She was a child of Jim Crow who became a millionaire. She bought a mansion, threw parties for the rich and famous, and proved that poverty was not her destiny.

Sources:

• Business Insider – “An 11-year-old was given an allotment of ‘undesirable’ land”
• BlackPast.org – Sarah Rector (1902–1967)
• Black Enterprise – “The ‘World’s Richest Negro Girl'”
• Barbados Today – Sarah Rector (1902-1967)
• AAPG Explorer – “The Unlikeliest Oil Millionaire”
• KCUR – “Sarah Rector’s ties to Kansas City”
• News On 6 – “‘Sarah’s Oil’ honors Sarah Rector’s legacy”
• The Root – “True Story of an 11-Year-Old Girl Who Became the Richest Black Woman in the World

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